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... tossing grenades back at enemies (another new move) ...

As I've never owned an XBox, this is news to me.

However looking through some of the guides you linked to (eg http://www.achieve360points.com/txt/d/Dead_Rising_ AG.txt ) it seems they are mostly about collecting items or finding secrets, rather than eking out the last bit of skill from their performance? That's what I meant, games like GTA award perseverance and endurance over skill.

I agree there's definitely potential in the achievements to have skill-based secondary goals, and I like that idea. Thanks for the heads-up.

Hexic HD has insanely difficult achievements. Only the most dedicated and talented players will get them. I gave up, there's no way I can ever do them.

Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter has ridiculous achievements. Three of them require you to be the best GRAW player in the entire world! One achievement requires you to host 1000 multiplayer games.

I don't know if Microsoft enforces any standards for the achievements, but if they don't then they should start doing so.

Hexic HD has insanely difficult achievements. Only the most dedicated and talented players will get them. I gave up, there's no way I can ever do them.

Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter has ridiculous achievements. Three of them require you to be the best GRAW player in the entire world! One achievement requires you to host 1000 multiplayer games.

I don't know if Microsoft enforces any standards for the achievements, but if they don't then they should start doing so.

The void you are imagining has been well filled by XBox 360 achievement points. If you are competing with your friends and family on points, It's not enough to finish the game you have to finish it with style (and do a bunch of other crazy or hard things). The best thing is, when you actually do that crazy/insane/hard thing to win the points, everyone sees it! Instant proof that you really did it!

As an example, check out the achievement point list for Dead Rising: http://www.achieve360points.com/game/deadrising/
or for Defender: http://www.achieve360points.com/game/defender/
or for Pac-Man: http://www.achieve360points.com/game/pacman/ (hardest: eat four ghosts four times in one stage)

Yes, some achievements you get just by playing the game. But many you really have to struggle and achieve game mastery to accomplish.

The void you are imagining has been well filled by XBox 360 achievement points. If you are competing with your friends and family on points, It's not enough to finish the game you have to finish it with style (and do a bunch of other crazy or hard things). The best thing is, when you actually do that crazy/insane/hard thing to win the points, everyone sees it! Instant proof that you really did it!

As an example, check out the achievement point list for Dead Rising: http://www.achieve360points.com/game/deadrising/
or for Defender: http://www.achieve360points.com/game/defender/
or for Pac-Man: http://www.achieve360points.com/game/pacman/ (hardest: eat four ghosts four times in one stage)

Yes, some achievements you get just by playing the game. But many you really have to struggle and achieve game mastery to accomplish.

The void you are imagining has been well filled by XBox 360 achievement points. If you are competing with your friends and family on points, It's not enough to finish the game you have to finish it with style (and do a bunch of other crazy or hard things). The best thing is, when you actually do that crazy/insane/hard thing to win the points, everyone sees it! Instant proof that you really did it!

As an example, check out the achievement point list for Dead Rising: http://www.achieve360points.com/game/deadrising/
or for Defender: http://www.achieve360points.com/game/defender/
or for Pac-Man: http://www.achieve360points.com/game/pacman/ (hardest: eat four ghosts four times in one stage)

Yes, some achievements you get just by playing the game. But many you really have to struggle and achieve game mastery to accomplish.

All Xbox Live Arcade games are required to have 12 achievements worth a total of 200 gamerscore. All retail games are required to have between 5 and 50 achievements, worth a maximum of 1000 gamerscore.

And the issue with "easy gamerscore" was more prevalent near launch, as the concept was still new and not all the developers put effort into creating worthy achievements. The 2K sports games, for example, had ridiculously easy achievements in the 2K6 games - NBA 2K6 and College Hoops 2K6 each had only 5 achievements, and they are easy enough that you can get all 1000 gamerscore in a single game, and a lot of people have borrowed/rented those two because they're so easy. But if you look at the 2K7 titles, there are a lot more achievements, and they're not nearly as easy.

If you check one of the websites dedicated to achievements (such as Achieve360Points.com, you'll see that games have really improved their achievements over time, as most games have a few easy ones that you get early on, a good amount that you get when you really spend time in the game, and then a few that are extremely tough - though the ridiculously tough ones such as getting #1 on the leaderboard have also disappeared lately, because they just result in people gaming the leaderboards to get there instead of actually playing.

And I think it's just as impressive to see the websites that have taken advantage of having your gamer profile visible on the web, such as MyGamerCard.net, and created leaderboards and the like based on the gamerscore.

It think it's important to note that with the exception of sports games (which generally have gamer pics for every team) Kameo and PDZ both rank in the top 5 for games with the most number of items available for download. Kameo has 38 items available for download. From strategy videos to gamer pics, themes, and even skin packs that are worth less then horse armor and perfect Dark Zero has 15 items.

You'd think they'd be all over offering content for for a game where it actually makes sense. Perhaps they're soured by poor sales of Seasonally themed Kameo skins...

Protip: maybe people don't want to buy insignificant chachkis for a mediocre game that only takes a few hours to complete. Maybe, just maybe, you'd have more success selling downloads of things that, I don't know, improve, extend, or refresh the gamplay?

I love google as much as the next guy, but some of these court battles are driving me insane. Couldn't google have prevented most of these legal snafus by simply not archiving irrelevant data? Yeah, I know they "say" it is used in order to improve their service to the end user, but I just don't know if I believe that or not. They wouldn't have to surrender any results if they don't backlog it. Why would you bother storing old e-mails the user wanted deleted? Attempt to document important company secrets? Blackmail? Fetish? As they say, there is no reason for them to keep this data since the text is scanned dynamically to generate their ads so the e-mails are still kept between you and the sender. So, why is it being kept after the email account holder doesn't want it anymore and deletes it? If it isn't important to the gmail account holder, should they even care?

You could argue that information has to be archived, kept just in case it could possibly be some sort of "proof" of illegal action by the user. Maybe someone admitted killing someone via a quick morning e-mail? Stole important company data and sent a bcc to their "hotgurl4u" gmail account just in case? I guess this is the mixed wonders of having a free email service. I suppose they need to get something out of the deal [keeping stuff].

Of course, half the respected deletions are probably recipes from various grandmothers. I wouldn't want to be caught dead with those in my box either...

Eh, just my two cents. I guess I am rambling

http://www.achieve360points.com/